Stores in the snow-battered East Coast may have been sparse this weekend, but shoppers kept spending online. Retailers spurred sales with new discounts and shipping offers to make sure gifts arrive by Christmas.

The storm that battered the East Coast, from the Carolinas to New York, may have put at least a $2 billion dent in "Super Saturday," which usually accounts for $15 billion worth of sales nationwide, according to weather research firm Planalytics.

Mall traffic was down 10 percent on Saturday, but it surged 65 percent Friday night as more people went out before the storm. Retailers that have must-have items like Toys R Us, Best Buy, and one-stop shops like Walmart are poised to recover the lost sales better than the rest of industry, weather research firm Planalytics said Monday.

In the unceasing race for market share, Mozilla's Firefox has edged ahead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, at least according to one statistical snapshot of which browser versions Web surfers use.

"Firefox 3.5 is now the most popular browser worldwide," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, the company that compiled the statistics. Cullen quickly added that all the versions of Firefox being used don't equal in number all the versions of IE in use, but said the statistic is telling nonetheless, given that Firefox's market share continues to increase while IE's continues to erode.

After news broke last week that Google was offering about $550 million for Yelp -- in what would have been its sixtieth acquisition since 2001 -- the startup has done a 180-degree turn and rejected the search giant's offer. The San Francisco, Calif.-based Yelp told Google over the weekend that it was no longer entertaining an acquisition offer, according to published reports.

Yelp and Google are both being tight-lipped about the deal gone sour. "Yelp is not able to provide comment on private discussions," said Stephanie Ichinose, a Yelp spokesperson, in an e-mail. Google's Andrew Pederson said: "Although we're always talking to various companies about various things, we don't comment on rumor or speculation."

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Yahoo says it will close its offices from Christmas through New Year's to help save money. The cost-cutting move ends a year in which Yahoo's revenue declined for the first time since 2001.

It's the first time that Yahoo has required most of its 13,200 employees to use vacation time or unpaid leave during the holidays. Only employees performing essential duties will be working from Dec. 25 through Jan. 1.

HP did a good job responding to complaints by a black man that its computers "are racist" because the included PC facial recognition software did not follow his face properly.

The statement was made in a YouTube video posted on Dec. 10 that went viral over the weekend, attracting newly 100,000 views.

The video shows what is described as an HP webcam following a white face to keep it centered, but failing to follow a black face.

The company did not overreact to the racial element, treating the issue, basically, as a help desk problem. It promised to look into a solution. How many other companies would have handled this so well?

In the world of social networks, these sorts of crises are going to become more and more common. To his credit, Desi--subject of the video--did it with good humor. Once the video went viral, HP was quick to respond.

His racism statement was said not quite in jest, but not in anger, either. He clearly has a valid complaint about the software and made a pretty funny video to demonstrate.